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Comment by dopamean | Hacker News Reader

It's funny you mention that. My first thought was, "wow, that's a lot of money." But then I thought, "but how much is it really?" I actually have no idea how much it should cost for them to do what they were trying to do though I suspect it is probably a fraction of that $150MM.

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For a more concrete perspective, if you assume that a good developer costs about $150,000/year, then this is one hundred years of development time for a team of 10 good developers, which is quite a lot.

I don't know just what this thing was supposed to do, so I don't know what the scope is.

no one working for the BBC in the UK would make that sort of money as a developer

I don't know about that. I've seen a few tech jobs around the £70-80k mark at the BBC, which is about $120k. Throw in the additional benefits and it's probably not far off.

Hah, I wish. I was a senior engineer there and earned less than half that.

You don't join the BBC for the money in IT... for the lax culture perhaps.

a few, and they'll be in London so your living costs can be truly massive.

Sometimes the rates you see advertised are also 3 month contract jobs where someone is looking for attention by stating the contract amount as if the job was 12 months salaried.

To 10 developers add a few dozens of Business Analysts and Managers. Outsource some work to India. Oracle licenses and IBM fees. That will easily get you over 100M.

I expect that the lack of a clearly defined "what they were trying to do" was a large part of the problem.

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